When Daniel Raffel emailed and asked if we’d be interested in publishing his list of favorite stuff from 2009 we quickly agreed. He has worked on some of the more interesting projects in Silicon Valley over the last couple of years, and has his finger on the pulse of new technology. His post is below
Hopefully you just read Michael’s post about Why Desktop Touch Screens Don’t Really Work Well For Humans . The answer is so simple that a lot of people overlook it: No one wants to hold their hands at monitor-level all the time, you’d get tired very quickly. If you’re looking for a quick answer as to why many touch screens like the TouchSmart line haven’t seen success in the past, that’d be it.
When it comes to winning in the App Store, one PR firm has discovered a dynamite strategy: throw ethics out the window. Reverb Communications , a PR firm that represents dozens of game publishers and developers, has managed to find astounding success on Apple’s App Store for its clients
MySpace Music , which launched a little less than a year ago, is the one bright spot of growth in an otherwise flatlining MySpace. But all that popularity comes at a price - billions of free streaming songs are costing MySpace up to $10 million a month in streaming fees, says a source, and the joint venture may lose $20 million or more this year. To minimize those losses, MySpace has made a big change to it’s product - songs no longer auto-play when you visit a MySpace user profile
Dead simple mobile payments for micro-transactions on the web are slowly gaining traction and a new, well-funded player has entered the growing space. Recently launched mobile payments startup BOKU has acquired competitors Paymo and Mobillcash and raised $13 million in Series A funding from Benchmark Capital, with Khosla Ventures and Index Ventures participating.
Twitter Search is easily the most promising aspect of Twitter.
No one likes advertisements. But the fact is that they are a part of our society and will continue to annoy. TiVo was previously a walled garden from ads, but they have slowly crept in over the last couple of years
